AIBU to think telling your partner something I told you in confidence makes you a bad friend?

I would not thank someone who tried to place me in the position of keeping secrets from my husband

I understand you have a different view, but your characterisation is mean-spirited. We both have friends who will on occasion refer back to things they've told us and ask what the other thinks. Or, we'll mention a great tip the other one suggsted next time we see them. Their permission is implicit and, we've always assumed, what most people would.expect.

I have no secrets of mine that i keep from my husband.

I don't tell him other people's secrets.

In the case of the friend I mentioned earlier in the thread there was a whiff of sanctimony. ‘Oh H and I have no secrets from each other because we wouldn’t want to lose our amazing connection based on truth and honesty. Aw don’t you have that with your H? You’re not that close, then?’
Aargh, grow up and go and look for your individuality. You might find it down the back of the sofa

What a gossip

Yes! I think I have perhaps watched too many Netflix documentaries about couples like this…

Years ago I had a friend who told her partner something I had said in confidence. Obviously when it found out I never confided anything to her again
If a friend tells me something in confidence it stays with me .

Totally agree. But I also find it quite chilling when people say that they think of themselves and their spouses as single entities. Who on earth would ever choose to get married if they thought it meant losing their identity as an individual human being with their own thoughts and their own relationships that are independent of anyone else.

I totally disagree with this. My husband is not an extension of me. If told a secret by a friend, it stays that way.

For me,, it depends on the conversation, the friendship and the secret.

So I'd tell my husband most things, but wouldn't if I was asked not to, it was very clear (even if not explicit) that I shouldn't discuss it with him, or if it was sensitive to the extent it would be plain wrong to. So if it concerned sensitive medical issues, sex problems etc, then I'd use my common sense

Also, if it was the wife with mutual friends with the secret, then I'd be far more cautious about talking to my husband if he was friends with the husband.

But in the main we do chat about things. We'd never let on that we knew though.

Surely it depends on the husband? If you've married a loud mouth who can't keep a secret or someone who likes to one-up others by showing they know things then obviously no. If I was married I would hope it would be to a man who had some courtesy and emotional awareness that he wouldn't show off information that could make anyone feel awkward.
Edit - don't know how I quoted you, sorry!

I’ve been married for 20 years. Not once have I told my husband anything that a friend has told me in confidence. We’re not a joint entity, we’re able to co-exist perfectly well without breaking the confidence of our friends for no other reason than to gossip about them, which is what it is. You’re not sharing your secrets, you’re gossiping.

I actually find that "husbands and wives shouldn't have secrets" a bit creepy tbh. Its got more than a whiff of control about it. Nothing you ever do, hear or are party to is for you alone, I get to know everything because I married you.

I don't buy that at all. If you genuinely cared about each other's friends, then you would respect their right to privacy. It's just gossip dressed up as concern.

Fair enough, you care about your ability to gossip with your husband more than you care about the privacy of your friends. As long as your friends are made aware of this, then they can choose what they share with you accordingly.

You don't care about them enough to resist gossiping about them though.

If your friend wanted your partner to know and was such good friends with him, they would have told him too.

There is no reason to be talking about someone else's private business to your husband - everyone here pretending it's anything other than gossip is lying to themselves.

When a friend tells me something that is very clearly personal information, of course I don't share it with my DH. It's a despicable thing to do. And I don't need to be told to explicitly - 99.9% it's fucking obvious that someone would really rather not be the subject of conjugal chit chat.

Why on earth do husbands and wives get a free pass with betraying the confidence of their friends? Utterly bizarre.

I never have. I have a senior position in my organisation and as a result know a lot of info about individuals at the company, company strategy and so on. None of which I have any business sharing with anyone!

If you care about your friend then you won't pass on private and personal information to someone else, will you?

For us, we genuinely care about each other's friends because we care about the people who we're each close to.

I actually cannot tell my dh confidential information about my work. I am in a government department, albeit at a relatively low level. We often know things which are announced on the news. I simply cannot tell dh about work issues in advance.

Here's some examples:

Someone I've worked with for a few years got sacked last week (rightly so). I mentioned that, and what had happened, because this person that I've occasionally mentioned has now ceased to be there but the reason for his dismissal is, technically, confidential.

My work also involves a lot of change management and some details are confidential at least at that point in time. But in sharing my successes and failures, what I'm proud of or frustrated by, I share the details with the one person I'm closest to in the world.

It's the same for both of us, and I personally don't see how you can meaningfully share your life without going beyond what you'd tell the bus driver.

I think married people who spill the beans on a friend's secret are very immature. I would go so far to say they are too immature to be married.

I am in my 50s and married. I certainly don't tell dh about my friend's medical issues, work problems etc. I only tell him things that he is going to find out anyway e.g. moving house.

Are you really saying that if a friend - who also knew your husband - confided in you something really personal and serious, e.g. she'd been raped, she'd been given an STD from a one night stand, that she needed to have an abortion, etc, that you would tell your husband about it?

My BF is like this but she's told me that anything I tell her, she'll tell her husband - so I moderate what I tell her. I don't tell my OH everything because he's a terrible gossip and can't keep anything to himself. Lots of men I know are like that, actually..

So I have a lot of secrets and keep some stuff to myself, I guess!

I’d love to know for what reason you’d need to tell your husband a friends secret, surely that’s just gossiping.